Could boris johnson defuse the ukrainian crisis? | thearticle

Suddenly, though not unexpectedly, the Ukraine crisis has reached boiling point. “This is probably the most dangerous moment,” the Prime Minister said in Brussels today at a meeting with

Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO Secretary General. British intelligence, he added, was “grim”, although he remains convinced that as yet no decision to invade has been made in Moscow.

Nevertheless, “something absolutely disastrous could happen very soon indeed”, quite possibly “in the course of the next few days”. Boris Johnson will later fly to Warsaw to offer support to

the Poles. It is a sobering thought that the Polish capital is less than 300 miles from Belarus, where Russian forces are massing, and only just over 500 miles from the Ukrainian border.

Poland is in the process of doubling its armed forces to 250,000 troops. The UK, meanwhile, has just over 150,000 and is cutting them still further. Nevertheless, it has sent troops to

Poland and Estonia to deter the Russians and these contingents are being reinforced. A poll by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) found that two thirds of Poles are ready to

fight for Ukraine — the only one out of seven EU countries where that was the case. The ECFR poll also found that, despite Brexit, more EU citizens think that the British should be defending

Ukraine (44 per cent) than their own country (43 per cent). Again, Poland is an outlier: there, 66 per cent want the UK to come to the aid of Ukraine.   It makes sense for the PM,

therefore, to be in Warsaw at such a perilous time. Despite concerns about democracy and the rule of law there, Poland remains a staunch ally and deserves our support in its hour of need.

The same applies to the Baltic states, which are also NATO allies, though even more vulnerable. Ukraine itself is outside the alliance but that does not mean it can be thrown to the Russian

bear. In an article for the _Wall Street Journal, _Boris Johnson writes: “We are not going to treat the nations at the heart of our Continent as pawns on a chessboard, to be haggled over or

sacrificed.” He delivered the same message in person to President Zelensky in Kyiv last week.   This diplomatic activity by the Prime Minister gives the lie to the claim that the British

Government is paralysed by his travails over Partygate. Nor is it true, as Sir Keir Starmer claims, that Boris Johnson is “mocked” abroad. In Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic states, he is

seen as a much more reliable ally than either President Macron or Chancellor Scholz, both of whom have been more equivocal in their diplomatic and military stance. Berlin has even impeded

the supply of German-made arms to Ukraine and RAF flights carrying weapons there have been obliged to avoid German airspace. What of Russia? Not everyone in her own party approved of the

current visit to Moscow by the Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss. The former Cabinet minister Robert Jenrick criticised her for giving Vladimir Putin too much respect. But they need not have

worried: Ms Truss is living up to her “Iron Lady” reputation by delivering a clear message to the Kremlin: there is “a diplomatic route” for Russia, but “any further invasion would incur

severe costs” that would prove more than it could bear. Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, responded by warning the British against “ideological approaches, ultimatums, threats”.

Yet he held open the door to “normalising” relations with the UK. It is unclear how much influence Lavrov has with Putin, but throughout the crisis he has sounded less hawkish than his boss.

The last hope of peace rests on a recognition by those around the Russian President that war would be too risky for his regime. It is true that Putin has an exaggerated idea of his

country’s power, especially its military strength. Roger Boyes in the_ Times _reminds us of a meeting in 2007 between Putin and Nicolas Sarkozy, then President of France. After Sarkozy had

delivered a long list of Russian offences against human rights, Putin told him: “So you either keep talking to me like this and I will crush you, or you stop now and I will make you king of

Europe.” Putin’s megalomania may even have grown since then, after he got away with invading Georgia and Crimea, then intervened in Syria and is now building a Sino-Russian axis with Xi

Jinping. Yet Russia is fundamentally weak and Putin knows it. A nuclear war with the West is not realistic and even a conventional one would wreck everything he has achieved in two decades.

His only real bargaining chip is his stranglehold over European gas supplies and this is a double-edged sword: Russia needs German euros as much as Germany needs Russian gas. So the entire

operation to besiege Ukraine may yet prove to have been a gigantic bluff. Perhaps he expected the US to turn a blind eye and the British to leave Europe to its own devices. If so, he was

wrong. In order to allow him to stand down his forces, Putin must be given a way out without loss of face. He cannot bear to play the role of the grand old Duke of York, marching his troops

down again without result.   What can the West offer Putin? The only thing that matters more to him than prestige is money. He may be the richest person in the world, but his wealth is

hidden in assets scattered across the West. He has just moved the largest of his four yachts from Hamburg to Kaliningrad to put it beyond the reach of sanctions. This shows that he is

sensitive to threats to his personal fortune.   Maybe there is a “grand bargain”, in Boris Johnson’s words, to be struck — but not about Ukraine. A private guarantee that Western

intelligence services and law enforcement agencies won’t go after the Russian President’s assets might be enough to give Kyiv a reprieve. But the implication would be that we could seize his

assets at any time. Putin is more vulnerable than any previous Russian leader precisely because of his avarice. And because so much of his wealth is thought to be in “Londongrad”, the

British have a unique hold over him. Boris Johnson may be the only man who could single-handedly defuse the Ukrainian crisis. Tough public diplomacy in Brussels and Warsaw, but spelling out

how personal sanctions might work in private, is perhaps the only way to get the kleptocrat in the Kremlin to see sense. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s

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